Word: xenon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Since the first explosion reverberated through the world's laboratories, the fission of thorium, as well as uranium, has been demonstrated. Atom-wranglers at Columbia University have shown that, under various conditions, the fission of uranium yields krypton, strontium, iodine, xenon, tellurium as disintegration products. The flood of reports made it appear that atomic physicists are off on the biggest big-game hunt since the discovery of artificial radioactivity was announced...
...quarts of air there is one quart of krypton. An inert gas discovered in 1898 by Ramsay and Travers, krypton is scarcer and less volatile than argon, neon and xenon; its name means "the hidden one." In the U. S., small quantities of krypton have been obtained by Linde Air Products Co. and Air Reduction Co. during the fractional distillation (selective boiling) of liquid air, and sold to academic laboratories for $100 a litre if pure, $15 a litre if mixed. Argon or nitrogen at low pressure are the usual fillers for electric tamp bulbs manufactured...
Argon, krypton, xenon, neon, helium and niton are called ''the noble gases" because, like supercilious bluebloods, they disdain to enter into chemical compounds with other substances. As long ago as 1896 noble argon was thought to have been caught in a fleeting intimacy with water, but that and other reported associations of the noble gases were so dubious that chemistry textbooks continue to label the six gases "inert, incapable of forming compounds...